


This Little Light of Mine

by HeartOfTheMirror



Series: Little Light of Mine [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark Magic, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Memory Loss, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Southern Gothic, black magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:15:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8232497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfTheMirror/pseuds/HeartOfTheMirror
Summary: Steve wakes up. Had he been asleep? He doesn't remember.He just wants to go home.  Detailed warnings in end notes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the StuckyBB2016 chat for all their inspiration and support with this piece! Especially Queenie, who very generously beta'ed (all mistakes are mine).
> 
> Detailed warnings in bottom notes.

Steve woke up to the smell of gasoline, which wasn’t worrisome in and of itself because Bucky often worked late at the garage and came home too tired to wash up before bed. But he was cold, and the ground beneath him was some kind of spider-web cracked concrete. 

“Good, you’re awake,” a man’s voice grunted. It sounded vaguely familiar like a song you’d heard once years ago but didn’t know the words to anymore.

Steve cracked open an eye. It felt gummy and sore, like he’d been hit in the face and fell asleep with the steak still dripping bloody juices down his cheek and neck. 

There wasn’t much he could see in any case. He was clearly in a gas station of some sort but it was dark outside and there weren’t no lights on to see by, only the crooked yellow aura from the street lights creeping in through the huge grime-encrusted windows. The man was crouched a couple of yards away, balancing on the balls of his feet with his elbows resting on his knees. Dangling between his fingers was the cherry of a half-smoked cig, casting just enough of a ruby glow for Steve to make out the tips of the man’s dirty, calloused fingers.

“You been robbin’ graves?” Steve asked the man because it was the first thing that came to mind. Steve sure felt halfway to dead, and with the fella’s long hair and ominous silhouette in the darkness, he could surely have been the grim reaper.

“Just yours and mine, pal,” the man said, his voice was just as rough and hushed as Steve’s. It was almost nice to feel like they were together in the strange reverence of this incredible moment.

Now that Steve had acclimated to the almost pleasant sharp twang of the gasoline he could smell the fainter hints of smoke coming from the cig the man was twirling between his talented fingers. It had a thick smell, like burning rope. It reminded Steve of his asthma cigarettes. He knew what was in that cig and it weren’t tobacco, that was for damn sure.

“What’re you doin’ in this gas station, buddy?” Steve asked, straining his weak arms to push himself up to sitting. His head pounded like a gong and he groaned, clutching his fine gold hair with one shaky hand. 

The man snorted and brought the cig up to his mouth to hold between his pouty chapped lips. “It ever occur to you to wonder what the fuck you’re doing in this shithole first?” he mumbled around the cig sardonically as he crab walked forward on his toes to reach out and steady Steve.

“No,” Steve said, feeling nauseous for how empty his stomach was. He hadn’t known hunger so bad it hurt like this in years. Not since Bucky started working. “I guess not. Listen, I gotta get home. My roommate, he’ll be worried about me.”

The guy went real still and quiet, his rough hands gripping almost painfully hard on Steve’s little arms. It occurred to Steve for the first time that he might need to be nervous about being trapped alone with this man under the hefty blanket of the shadows. Where no one could hear him scream, presumably.

“Your roommate isn’t missing you, Steve. That, I can guarantee.” Steve tried to make out the man’s face in the bobbing glow of the cherry but all he got were shapes and impressions, like the vague form of a woman’s body taking shape from sand dunes in the desert. He saw the idea of a man more than he saw the man himself.

“You know Bucky?” Steve asked, hating how his voice wavered just a little bit on his friend’s name. The idea of this man doing something to Bucky… Steve couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t stomach it.

“We had a brief acquaintance,” the man said with some kind of a strange humor in his voice. Steve didn’t like feeling like he was being made fun of for things he didn’t know about.

The man ran his fingers over Steve’s hair so light that he might as well have been caressing cobwebs or dandelion fluff. His dirt-christened fingers smeared over Steve’s pale cheek, his thumb stroked down the strong line of Steve’s nose. 

“It’s really you,” the man breathed. “You have no idea; the things I’ve done. I would have done so much worse. So much _more_ to get you here. To get you back, Stevie.” Revenant. 

“Uh,” Steve said, wondering if there was anything behind him he might run into if he scooted back. “Do we know each other?”

“They told me you might have some memory problems,” the man said a little manically. The cig fell from his lips and rolled away, rocking back and forth as it tried to settle on the uneven floor. Steve felt a warning shiver rattle down his crooked spine.

“I think I should go,” Steve said suddenly. “You should go, too. Whatever we’re doing out here...” just saying the words made Steve’s head hurt like all the static was being turned up in the world. “There’s nothing,” Steve gasped. “Nothing…” He gripped his chest, where his heart was beating against its cage like a rabbit thrashing to escape a trap. 

“That’s right,” the man said, “there’s nothing out here. No one for miles. We’re safe, Stevie. No one will come listening. No cameras, no electricity, no way for them to track us. I made sure of that.” 

The man clutched at something near his breast. For a second Steve thought his heart was racing too–– maybe there was something in the air, some kind of chemical. They were doing crazy things, always building newer and stranger weapons for the war. Who knew what they might do next? 

Steve met a man in a bar once who told him some crazy things about the new bombs they were testing out in Nevada. What happened to the people who survived the initial blast.

But even as these thoughts hurricaned through his mind, Steve saw that the thing the man was gripping fit neatly in his fist. When the man retrieved the cig from the floor the little red beacon burning at the end cast its weak light briefly over his chest. It was some kind of pouch hung on a thick black string. A very odd necklace for a man to wear unless there was something in it that needed protecting, maybe. 

The cig was mostly done for but there were one or two puffs left maybe. The man methodically cleaned off the filter with the least dirt smeared corner of his jacket. Steve watched him with detached curiosity. Was cannabis such a luxury as to be fretted over?

“Sorry,” the man said, looking up through the curtain of his tangled hair. “I hadn’t meant to smoke it all. I just needed something for my nerves. Look at me,” he said as if it wasn’t black as tar and Steve weren’t half blind, besides. “My hands are shaking,” the man said in awe, as if such a thing had never happened to him before.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen your face,” he said hushed and low. Almost a growl. 

Steve swallowed thickly. Before Steve had any idea what was happening, the man curled one hand around the back of his head, cupping it as though he were holding the last drop of water in the desert. He leaned in and kissed Steve, drinking him down as though Steve were the blood of Christ and Bucky was teetering on the brink of hell’s gate.

It was closed-mouthed, but lingering and intimate. Not like some of the kisses Steve had seen that seemed to be hungry in an impersonal way. This kiss was an act of worship and a declaration of war. Or so it seemed to Steve, who had never been kissed before, not by anyone who meant it.

The man’s lips left his own feeling a little damp, though Steve could have sworn there was no tongue. Before Steve could draw a breath the filter of the cig was pressed to his mouth. “Breathe in, Stevie,” the man ordered gently, his thumb ticklishly following the delicate curve of the shell of Steve’s ear. 

Well, Steve figured, he’d damn well earned it so he might as well just inhale. He coughed a little when the smoke hit his lungs. The man made shushing sounds and rubbed his back through it, a real sick nurse in the making. Yeah, Steve was beginning to understand why the man had saved the last of the cig. Whatever was in that wrapper was ten times stronger than the stuff in his asthma cigarettes. 

“She said this would help,” the man told him. “With the nausea and the dizziness and the rest of it. I’m sorry I smoked so much of it. I only meant to take a puff or two.”

“What?” Steve asked, gripping onto the man’s arms only because he couldn’t quite get his bearings enough to stand yet. “What did you do to me?” he asked, though the question made him sick to his stomach, made the buzzing in his ears pick up volume again. “There’s nothing,” Steve gasped. “There’s nothing out there...”

“I know,” the man said, soothingly. “I know. But you’re here now. I got you. Do you think you could handle some light now?” he asked. “She said it was best to introduce it slow. Just a little at a time, since you ain’t been used to it.”

“Yes,” Steve snapped. “Yes, put a light on.” He knew for sure it would hurt his eyes, his poor beaten head, but this terrible not knowing was worse. It made him feel helpless and trapped the way no dead end alley full of schoolyard bullies ever had.

“Close your eyes,” the gravely voice ordered. Steve complied, only because he had the feeling that the man could actually see in the murky tar of the night somehow. Bucky would kill him for trusting this strange and feral stranger but it wasn’t exactly like Steve had much choice.

There was a little click. Steve whimpered as his eyelids burned red, all the blood illuminated as though the thin little veils of flesh were being burned through by the sun.

“Shh, I know,” the man said, covering Steve’s eyes with his hands and blocking out the worst of the light. “I promise it was the dimmest light I could find. It’s an old battery powered army lamp. I think it’s been through ‘Nam.” None of that made a lick of sense to Steve. He just leaned into the comforting weight of the man’s hands on his face. Anything to block out the pain, the burn of the light.

He breathed deeply a few times while his host waited patiently. When he felt he was ready, Steve lifted his head away from the man’s hands. A few more breaths passed before he felt strong enough to open his eyes.

“Bucky?” he said incredulously. The first sight he saw was that too-familiar face. But it was streaked in dirt and speckled with stubble the way Bucky never allowed it to be. That long, luscious dark hair, tangled and wild in a jungle halo around his head. There was no way this was his best friend. Bucky would cut his own arm off before he ever allowed himself to look that unkempt. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, absently noting the painful longing on the stranger’s face. “For a second there I could have sworn you looked just like–-”

“It’s me, Stevie,” the man said. He didn’t sound quite as sure as he should have been, even if he was a lying asshole.

“Sure,” Steve said for lack of anything else to say. “Of course it is. Of course you are. Listen, let’s go home.” Bucky would be home, back at their apartment, and this imposter, whoever he was, would really get it then.

The man had the gall to look guilty. “I’ll take you back to Brooklyn one day,” he promised. “But not for a while. She said to keep you away from the place where you––” the man cut himself off and Steve was so grateful. He was shaking, and the static was shrieking at him like metal scraping over metal, screaming in the wind.

“I’ve got a safe house waiting for us,” the man told him. “A nice one, the nicest I could find. It’s got hot water and wi-fi.” He paused. “You’ll love wi-fi. I’ll show you, it’ll be great. I have a room for you, full of sunlight in the mornings, for your art. Blankets. Rations. You don’t gotta worry ‘bout nothing,” the man, who was definitely not Bucky, promised.

“If you got such a nice house,” Steve gasped around the screaming in his head. “Then why are we in an abandoned gas station miles from nowhere?”

“I didn’t want the house to be too close to where she lived,” not-Bucky said with a shiver, clutching at the little pouch around his neck like it could protect him from having to talk about this woman. “It’ll take us a couple of days to get home,” he added, straightening his spine and looking Steve in the eyes as he mentally redirected himself. “There’s only one thing we gotta do before I can take you there.”

“Sure,” Steve said, feeling already that he would regret the words. “Let’s get whatever it is over with.”

“Good,” the man said. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on top of the lamp. Steve had just acclimated to the light, and he was once again plunged in darkness, though not quite so absolute as it had been before. 

“Now take off your trousers,” the man said. Then the man-who-was-not-Bucky stood up and started unbuttoning his pants, so perfunctory it was almost awkward, and maybe a little bit fumbling.

“I will not!” Steve shouted, scrambling to his feet. “Who the fuck do you think you are, buddy?!” He balled his hands to keep himself from shoving at the guy. The screaming quieted the buzz in his head just a little, like the more riled Steve got the less he noticed the static that was clawing at his brain.

“Look,” the man-who-was-not-Bucky said with an ornery expression. “I aint askin’. I’m tellin’ ya. Take off your trousers or I’ll take them off for you. You got no idea what I’ve done to get us this far and I’m not letting you fuck it all back to hell because you’re suddenly a little gun shy. We’ve got to complete the ritual. It’s part of the deal and that’s all there is to it. I’d spare us both if I could, believe me. We just have to get through this and then we’re home free.”

“Oh fuck you!” Steve said scathingly. “You expect me to just bend over for you, easy as that? Some ritual, huh?” Steve mocked. “Just ‘cause I’m a small guy you think I go weak for it, is that it? Well, you got another thing comin’, pal. You can suck your own dick for all I care, but I’m getting out of here and going home.”

“You aren’t listening,” the soldier said, his voice suddenly flat. “I’m not asking. I’m doing this one way or another so why don’t you just make it easier on the both of us and take off your pants.”

Steve crossed his arms and lifted his chin defiantly. He knew he was licked before he picked this fight, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth the effort to put up a resistance. The soldier took a menacing step forward. Whatever might have been of Bucky was gone in that instant except for the low banked fury that came whenever Steve refused to do something Bucky thought was in his best interest.

“Not my good Sunday pants you don’t!” Steve shouted, stepping back, though how he could have known he was in his good church clothes in the oppressive gloom them kept him from seeing more than the vague halo of second-hand street light bouncing off the soldier he couldn’t say. And why he was in his good church clothes, well that was another good question. He and Bucky were comfortable, sure, but not enough to be wearing their best clothes around for no reason.

“Do you know why I have to do this, Stevie?” the man asked, stepping towards him aggressively. He looked wild, disheveled, angry. “You think I want to be here, doing this? You think I wanted to dig up your grave with my bare hands? Pull you up from the earth in bits and pieces?” 

The soldier shuddered violently as he remembered that. Cradling each precious relic in his hands, reassembling them in the satin-lined box he’d bought at the craft store. He’d actually buckled his best friend’s remains into the passenger seat to keep that box from sliding around. He drove it all the way to her, where the bonfires had already been lit in the backwoods outside her home.

The farther away from his place of death they did the ritual, the better, she said.

Bucky was shuddering now as he hadn’t allowed himself to do then.

“I had to do it,” he said out loud, holding his arms around himself. “I had to. All those favors, all that digging just to find someone who could–-” the man’s teeth were chattering. 

“You don’t want to know what they do on the magical black market, Stevie. You don’t want to know the kinds of things they ask for. But I found her. Traded enough favors to get you here. And now that I have you here I’m _not_ letting you slip back into the darkness. You’re my sunshine, Steve,” the soldier said with a crooked little smile, still wrapping his arms around himself like it was the only thing keeping him together.

“The last time I remember being happy was that night, do you remember? That night before I shipped out. I held you in my arms and sang you that song,” Bucky said.

Steve felt sick, a ghostly disorienting sense of deja vu. Bucky, _his_ Bucky, warm and clean and cuddly, rubbing his nose along the delicate shell of Steve’s ear ‘till it tickled and humming that ridiculous lullaby at him. That memory had no place here.

“How long have you been away in the war?” Steve asked eventually when the silence became thicker than the oppressively humid air. 

“Oh sweetheart,” Bucky laughed, with no trace of humor. “I’m still in the war. There’s nothing but the war. This world doesn’t know how to get by if it’s not tearing itself to pieces.” 

Steve’s lips were numb, his heart was racing, weak thready beats. Steve didn’t feel quite right. He put a hand to his chest, leaning heavily against the sales counter when he found he could no longer keep himself upright.

Bucky rushed forward in an instant and caught him. “We’re running out of time,” Bucky growled, his eyes wide and panicked. “We have to complete it. That’s what she said. It has to end in fertility. In life and love and fucking rainbows too, I guess.” 

The man gently eased Steve down to the floor again, his hands caressing Steve’s sides soothingly. Steve found he didn’t have the energy to object. Bees were buzzing under his skin. Bucky’s words were buzzing in his ears. The whole world was nauseating like he’d been on a tilt-a-whirl after a big meal.

He knew the man’s hands were working at his buckle but it didn’t mean anything.

“Steve? Stevie-boy?” Bucky asked. Steve couldn’t find it in him to answer. “Shitting fuck nugget cunts,” Bucky swore, yanking Steve’s button down shirt up and kissing the dip of his belly button.

Steve flinched, ticklish. “Bucky,” he gasped. 

“Stay with me,” Bucky begged into the skin of Steve’s stomach, curling his fingers through Steve’s. “You won’t ever have to touch me again after this but I’m gonna get us through this. I’m gonna make it feel real good for you, sweetheart.”

With his one hand still locked with Steve’s Bucky popped the button on his friend’s slacks, yanked the zipper halfway down impatiently and then just tugged the whole mess of it- unbuckled belt, half-open fly and cheap undershorts- down to Steve’s knees. It was funny how Steve didn’t feel exposed. He didn’t feel much of anything until Bucky sucked his cock down his throat without preamble. 

Jackknifing up at the sudden and overwhelming sensation, Steve reached for Bucky’s hair, gripping it tightly in his free hand and groaning from the deepest part of his gut. Bucky laved with his tongue generously, sucking too hard and making Steve want more, want everything all at once even as it overwhelmed him. Steve felt sick to his stomach he was so conflicted and jumbled up.

He whined when Bucky pulled off his dick with a pop to bent over Steve’s legs and carefully take off his shoes one at a time, setting them together with military precision by the base of the counter. Steve’s slacks and drawers followed, folded into neat squares and stacked on the counter while Steve squirmed and whined, too shy to reach down for his own hard spit-shiny cock but too shameless to want anything other than more of what Bucky had to offer. Or for all of this to stop so he could just go back to sleep, one of the two.

The overpowering part wasn’t even the pleasure. The pleasure was an afterthought, an echo in a canyon, never as loud as the original yell. It was the static, the way that Bucky’s lips had pulled him away from it, make the buzzing fade back into endless void that washed through and behind the world, oceanic and incomprehensible.

Bucky wrapped a hand around Steve’s cock, no romance, and jacked him firm and steady while he popped open button after button on Steve’s shirt, occasionally leaning down to press a kiss to the newly exposed skin.

“You want it?” Bucky asked. “You want me inside you? Filling you up ‘till you’re warm enough to walk in the light again? You want that, baby?” Bucky was still in his undershirt and black cargo pants, his combat boots still laced halfway up to his knee. Steve was bare and fragile beneath him. Together they must have made quite a sight.

“I don’t know. Maybe- I… I don’t think so,” Steve whined, desperate like he’d never been for anything in his life. He just wanted something to fucking make sense. He wanted something to feel the way it was supposed to.

“Come on,” Bucky said, gently helping Steve to sit up and letting go of his cock. Steve felt the warmth that had begun to build at Bucky’s attentions fade a little. He curled into his friend, wanting it back. Bucky stripped off the last of Steve’s clothing and folded it into another neat square, driving Steve crazy with anticipation. Steve remembered that jab he’d made about his Sunday trousers and wondered why Bucky cared about that when he apparently didn’t care whether or no Steve wanted to be fucked. Clothes be damned, he would give anything, do anything, to feel human again. If that meant Bucky fucking him or leaving him alone in the dark and the silence, well it was all the same to Steve, so long as everything stopped causing him pain. Confusing him when it should have been simple; rote.

Bucky shoved the square of folded fabric under Steve’s hips and helped him lay down again. Steve heard a cap click in the darkness and he knew what was coming next. Bucky spread his knees wide with the backs of his hands. Steve was dazedly anticipating the cold touch of the petroleum jelly with a nervous little shiver in his gut.

It didn’t come.

The gel was warm and tingled around the sensitive skin of Steve’s pink little hole as Bucky rubbed over it gently with his index finger. Not breaching, just applying enough pressure to get Steve used to the thought. Bucky chuckled as Steve gasped and attempted to thrust down on the invasion.

“The future’s got all kinds of fancy new miracles,” Bucky said knowingly, stealing Steve’s question about “the future” by kissing the living daylights out of him.

“I don’t know what’s. . . “ Steve said when Bucky pulled away, but Steve lost whatever he’d been trying to say as Bucky slowly sunk his cock in Steve’s tight hole. This stranger with Bucky’s face was biting his lip, his eyelashes fluttering over his cheeks with every millimeter of his dick he managed to stuff up inside of steve.

“You feel so good,” the stranger whispered roughly, his voice so awed it made Steve feel like crying. Bucky was holding onto Steve’s hip lightly washing his thumb back and forth over the delicate skin.

“This isn’t about me, though,” bucky muttered. He looked sad, like hurting Steve was taking a seam-ripper to his heart strings. Which was strange because all the man had to do was stop, but he wouldn't. Bucky took his other hand, still slick with the gel and began fondling Steve’s limp cock. He was too overwrought to get hard on his own but Bucky knew every sweet spot to rub and just how to move his fingers along the head and the shaft.

“Please don’t,” Steve whispered as Bucky jacked him harder and fucked him gently. Bucky hesitated uncharacteristically. 

“I’m sorry Steve,” he confessed, twisting his wrist just so and ramming into Steve’s ass with a comparatively rough thrust. “But this has gotta work. So you gotta come too. Just to be sure.”

“Nooo,” Steve moaned. His cheeks were damp and he could taste the salt of his own tears. His arms were weak as cooked spaghetti. He couldn’t even summon the strength to kick at the man fucking him.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Bucky kept chanting now with every thrust like it was the rosary of fucks. Enough prayers for each sin and he’d be forgiven. Steve let our a sob, frantic, and managed to raise his arms just enough to score ten red lines down Bucky’s back and arms as the orgasm was roughly fucked out of him, rushing through him and carrying him away like a riptide.

“Oh fuck,” Bucky gasped, forcing his cock into Steve as deep as it would go one last time and letting his warmth fill Steve up and claim him.

Steve lay there for a minute, damp with the sweat of their bodies and trapped by Bucky’s bulk where he was barely keeping himself from crushing Steve.

“Well,” Steve panted. “I guess it worked ‘cause I’m not dead. But the instant I catch my second wind you will be.” And Bucky, that fucking asshole, had the nerve to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:  
> Steve dies in Brooklyn while Bucky is away at war and he never becomes Captain America.
> 
> There is sex which neither of them strictly consents to.
> 
> Bucky ignores Steve's spoken desire to not have sex in order to save his life. He attempts to make it a pleasurable experience for both of them but it isn't really. 
> 
> ...
> 
>  
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!


End file.
